(Im CCing this to people outside the RDF Core WG as the issue is much
larger than just for RDF. Please be selective in CCing replies in
order to avoid cross-list postings, thanks. -Pat)
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>From: Graham Klyne <gk@ninebynine.org>
>Subject: URI-CG group chartered
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>FYI, the URI CG is now officially chartered.
>
> URI Coordination Group
> http://www.w3.org/2001/12/URI/
>
>"The mission of this group is to coordinate ongoing work in the area of
>Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs); to serve as a coordinating body of
>all issues involving URIs in the W3C and act as the coordinating body
>for URI issues with other groups.
>
>...
>
>Back in the mists of 2002, I volunteered to act as RDFcore liaison
>for this group.
>
>As yet, there's been little activity. It might be worth noting that
>Roy Fielding is working on a revision to RFC2396 (version available
>at: http://www.apache.org/~fielding/uri/rev-2002/rfc2396bis.html).
>
>The IETF URI BOF (a week or so ago) also had some discussion or IRIs.
>
>There were a couple of things raised at the IETF meeting that may be
>of relevance to RDFcore:
>
>(1) a suggestion that "resources" don't exist unless a URI is
>defined for them. (I raised an objection to this --because we have
>bnodes-- which was somewhat brushed aside with "If RDF has a problem
>with URIs its RDF's problem not URI's problem. Since the matter is
>more philosophical than of practical import, I don't think it's a
>big deal.)
>
But this IS a VERY big deal, and we should raise hell about it, and
not stop raising hell until this idea is abandoned. This decision
would be a disaster not just for RDF but for almost any web logic. It
would force all web logics to treat resources as temporal entities
which come into existence at a time (and maybe go out of existence
and reappear later). This plays havoc with ALL quantified logics, not
just RDF. It effectively makes all current mechanical reasoners
invalid (since they all use, one way or another, the principles
underlying existential quantification.) It also plays havoc with all
semantics for NL dialog and just about everything else. It would
drive a truck through all assertional datatyping and most attempts to
do syntax layering (such as the OWL/RDF mappings and any future
son-of-OWL/RDF mappings.) It is not just an obscure philosophical
niggle: it is absolutely fundamental.
For one (tiny) example of the trouble it would cause, try making
sense of this idea in the context of a URI scheme for identifying
dates and times. If nobody has perviously mentioned 3.48 am on the
24th of February, 1865, does that date suddenly come into existence
at the time someone one first mentions it with a URI? What if someone
has mentioned the year 1865? Did that particular year have a
minute-length hole in it, which has just gotten filled in? Don't
laugh when your temporal reasoner figures out that you don't need to
get to the airport until a minute after the flight leaves.
This group needs to pay some serious attention to what it is talking
about. Fielding's draft cited above repeats verbatim the extremely
grandiose and rather wooly text from RFC 2369 claiming that
'resources' are anything that can possibly exist, on the web or off
it. It is irrational and incoherent to assert this and also treat
resources as though they were datastructures or computational
constructs of some kind. If the group's attitude to issues like this
is that these are just philosophical niggles of no real consequence,
then the best thing this group could do would be to disband itself
before it does more harm, or at the very least try co-opting someone
who knows something about what the issues are here. URIs are too
important to be left to syntactical engineers.
Pat Hayes
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